My Journey on Lincoln's Assassination

[L Verge]

(09-17-2018 12:00 PM)KLarson Wrote:  Mike,
I think you should read my book. When I started researching Mary Surratt's story, I believed that she was innocent and that I was going to prove it and save her! Oh, how naive I was! It took me only about two months of research to realize she was guilty of involvement with the plot. It took a couple more years of finding every primary source available, and reading all the books, to discover she was very much involved and that the trial's outcome - that she was guilty - was right. Along the way I became convinced of Mudd's guilt, too. Those years of research also showed me how many researchers, historians, and conspiracy theorists misrepresented primary sources, deliberately misquoted them, or completely ignored them because the sources did not fit with their theory. Many of the books you mentioned were written by people who shamelessly ignored the documentation or manipulated it and made fake news out of it.

Louis Weichmann was indeed afraid for his life, and so was John Lloyd. But the documentation supports his, and Lloyd's, testimony about Mary and the others. Not only did Weichmann reveal his uneasiness about what was going on in the Surratt boarding house to his supervisor, Maj. Daniel Gleason, but he also wrote to Father Menu about his suspicions, too. Booth intercepted and kept Menu's response asking for more information, so Weichmann never saw his letter. How curious that Menu knew Lou Weichmann was concerned about illegal activity in the house but later called Weichmann's testimony false. Menu was a Confederate sympathizer.. Too bad Weichmann did not learn that Booth had correspondence in his trunk that could have supported Weichmann's own defense. Mary Surratt sympathizers always claim that Lloyd and Weichmann lied on the stand. Why would Weichmann and Lloyd choose to discredit Mary when they already had half a dozen they could testify against? They did not have to implicate Mary to save themselves. Mary helped Booth in any and every way she could. She wanted Lincoln dead. She was a Confederate sympathizer. Period. She was guilty and died for her role. Why couldn't the defense find anyone to testify in Mary's defense? All the defense could drum up were a few priests who ended up testifying that they barely knew her. Others on this thread have also mentioned that later testimony revealed that Mary was involved - Atzerodt and Payne before they were hanged, Smoot years later. Her eyesight? Well, she recognized Payne well enough on earlier occasions to mention how handsome he was - even though she knew he first introduced himself as James Wood, a minister, then as Lewis Payne when he reappeared at her boarding house weeks later (when she did not seem to care who he was, only that he "was a great looking Baptist preacher!") And yes, thank you Laurie, Reverdy Johnson said in his opening statement that if he thought Mary was guilty he would not defend her. And he didn't.

As usual, Kate, an excellent rebuttal. This is what comes after years of intense research on various levels, folks.

Many years ago, I wrote a speech on Mary Surratt and entitled it "Did She or Didn't She?" After citing her upbringing in a slave-holding culture, her marriage into a slave-holding family, her faith in the Confederacy, and finally the various pieces of evidence against her, my conclusion boiled down to the simple definition of "conspiracy" in the 1865 Conspiracy Trial. Basically, when one enters into a conspiracy, one is liable for what any member of that conspiracy might do. To save one's self, one would have to stop the conspiracy personally or report all to the authorities.

There were enough actions taken by Mary, especially on April 14, to lead to suspicion of having knowledge of the conspiracy - at least of the kidnap plot. Having made no attempt to stop anything, she became a conspirator in the assassination in the eyes of the law. To me, her sentence was the logical conclusion to her case.

And, in my opinion, Dr. Mudd was spared (by one vote) because there was no evidence that he communicated with Booth between the failed kidnap plot in March and the early-morning hours of April 15, when the fugitives showed up at his door -- whereas Mrs. Surratt was doing errands for Booth only hours before he murdered Lincoln.